The Man Who Knew Too Little
by CallHerVictor
Summary: An addition to my own piece, "The Man Who Knew Too Much." Time stamped post-Endgame through Eternal Tide. Alternate title: 101 Ways to Make QS like Gretchen Janeway


**A/N: So, for Secret Summer I wrote, "The Man Who Knew Too Much" for Malezita. And then, Mizvoy happened in with a sequel title that fit with a voice I've never ever written before. Alternate title: 101 Ways to Make QS like Gretchen Janeway**

* * *

**Set post-Endgame and all the way through Eternal Tide**

* * *

Kathryn.

Her father said it meant "pure."

It's taken years without her to come to grips with the guilt, the regret, and the private knowledge that I would have had only one child... if that first child hadn't been her. If she hadn't been stolen by her father, carried off to the stars before she could stand on her own accord. If he'd left me some part of her that was solely mine to nurture, instead of groomed into the hardened soldier she is now.

The despicable reality is he made her this way, drove her toward perfection, away from what made her vulnerable. Taught her how to carve out all the tender pieces, turn all the soft edges into hard ones. He'd been doing it long before he died. And long after... or so it seems.

She's so much like him it's arresting, catches my breath between swallows of bittersweet champagne. Amid the hundreds of happy faces, uniformed officers mingled with their civilian families, I can still pick out those eyes. But I can't feign indifference the way he could, the way she can, calling up some assiduous mien to tamp back the rising emotion.

My love for her is like a bladed line, something that catches me under the chin and chokes back all the well-meaning words I want to say. Simple things like: _I missed you. I love you. Please, let me hold you_. Knowing, of all things, they are the least she'd like to hear. Instead, I offer her shallow platitudes of pride and admiration for the work she's done, the obstacles she's overcome, all the while upholding the values we instilled in her.

No. Not we.

_Him_.

What designs I had on her future are long passed, dismissed first by her father and then, in time, by her. Resurrected briefly when Mark had drawn out the portions of her hardwired by anatomy, all the while giving her the fantastic security that she could have a family and continue to wander the galaxy.

It's a fate I'm glad he was spared, even if sparing him that meant suffering her loss. But she was settling, and he knew it; foregoing all previous appetites for a lean diet of matrimonial security. The man whom space travel made sick wed to the woman who wasn't content to sit for a meal.

Ridiculous.

Though, now that he's gone, I wonder if anyone will spirit her back to that particular ambition. If she had the time to find someone who made her wildly desirous of the traditions I once tried to instill in her.

Does she even remember how to care for seedlings or work the earth with her hands? I doubt it. All of that knowledge is dormant, chalked up as another provincial lesson from her Arcadian mother.

What use could it be... _would it ever be_... in the Delta Quadrant?

It's so hard to look at her knowing I had my first child because I was in love. My second because I was alone. There was a clear division in our household the moment she was born. Them against me, then, when her sister came, against us. Still, part of me aches, in the place she was nourished and grew.

To Phoebe's credit she has always been the more tolerant one, then again, neither of us have had much choice in the matter. Existing in a world where any number of hazards can and _did_ steal what little we held dear. She's kept me sane over the years, when the grief was almost too much to tolerate, the vacuum of one absence compounded by another. It comes natural to her. Thinking and living like each day was her last, the interminate illusion of youth having skipped her. It seems I am always the one trying to catch up: left standing, gawking, and grieving another loss I never accurately predicted.

Naively, I never thought I'd actually lose her. Never suspected the three week mission would become the exhaustive roller coaster of emotion it has been. Fear. Grief. Acceptance. Hope. Fear again. More grief. All ending in a cold reality that she could make it home, but the odds were slim. Narrower still that she'd accomplish it in my lifetime.

And now. Here she is. Our Katie, _rode in on a wave of flame_, as Owen so proudly put it.

_Our_. Like he's had anything to do with her upbringing at all.

He moves in the corner of my sight line with the weighted presence of a dignitary, but the free laughter of one proud papa. Seems about right. His son is a manifold image of him, _sans_ about fifty pounds and thirty years. But seven years ago the same boy meant very little to him, regarded only as the Paris Family's black eye over an otherwise pristine Federation linage.

I needn't remind him, or anyone else for that matter, exactly _who_ is responsible for cleaning up that mistake, too.

Kathryn moves through the crowd to the semi circle we've formed naturally in adoration of Owen's new granddaughter. They part to allow her ample room to join us. She skips the unspoken cue of well-wishers and takes possession of the infant.

The child gurgles and yawns, stretches then curls herself deeper against Kathryn's uniformed breast, eliciting a soft chorus of '_awws_' from the group.

"Want one?" Phoebe. Only Phoebe could ask this and not be met immediately with a withering glare.

Thomas' wife, B'Elanna, looks startled at first then amused once she's finds the measure of genetics between my youngest child against my eldest.

Kathryn only chuckles and smiles the half-smirk so uniquely hers. No one else in our family does that.

I'm sure they've been subjected to it for years, her crew. They, too, seem to share a nominal understanding of what it means. She hands the infant back to her engineer, wraps a loose arm around Phoebe's shoulder, and whispers a secret into her ear.

What passes between them is forbidden, a quick rush of dialogue unhurried but direct, causing Phoebe to rock her forehead against Kathryn's before she lays a chaste kiss on her cheek.

"Me, too," she says.

It's a rare but proud moment for me, one that's echoed in its half-life of quiet conversation around the circle. But they couldn't know how many _years_ I've spent forcing these two together, pulling them apart when that failed, before finally resigning myself to the nature of polar opposites.

Still, Phoebe's good for Kathryn, keeps her humble the way their father's brothers did him. As he rose in rank, set and exceeded the bar time and time again, they never hesitated to remind him he was once Eddie-Eddie, cold spaghetti, the same way Phoebe unfailingly recounts her sister's first failed away mission: sneaking out to meet a boy.

Phoebe makes light of the story. It's what she misses in the tale, what Kathryn laughs at with caution, that raises an old suspicion in me. I'm almost certain the night in question was also the night she lost her virginity. Sure of it now by the way she counts off the seconds twitching her right ring finger against her thumb nail. Just enough of a tell to confirm the darkness I'd seen in her eyes at the time should _never_ had gone unmentioned. The look that said it was all too much to handle as her father lectured her about 'conduct unbecoming a Janeway.'

But at the time, I chose to say nothing.

So, whether it was Cheb Packer or Tyler Mayland who first exposed her to such complications, I might never know. But I'm sure he left no lasting impression. Too soft, both of them. Too brazen. Kathryn craves in men what her father sought in me: the mastery of skills too tiresome for her pursuits – cooking, cleaning, child rearing – but also the intellect and force of will to hold her firmly in place.

Though where that place might be... I can't guess.

The crowd collapses easily, breaking off into smaller groups when she pulls Phoebe around to meet a cluster of new faces I'm certain Phoebe already knows. She's made a habit of attending these things. Meeting the families of the crew, finding kinship in common loss. I've had no such luxury, couldn't bring myself to face the shame of who exactly I was… or rather, who I was _responsible_ for.

Right now, I'm not even sure I know anymore.

Even in the tight embrace of their families, their eyes are on her. Looking for the assurances they should be seeking elsewhere. Ironically, it's the fiercely independent child who would not take my breast, who had to be coaxed, convinced, and coddled through infancy that now moves through the crowd with all the calming grace of a mother.

I've never had that kind of bond with her.

A sob lurches free from my throat, smothered under the quick hand that comes up to catch it. I move off to the adjoining chamber, safely away from the voices and faces of her crew. No need to make a scene.

Safely alone, I let the tears fall, each soundless wave breaking over the bottom of my vision, wetting my cheeks faster than I can wipe them away. For the most part, it feels good. Releases the tension building my temple and cleanses the uncertainty from my mind.

_She's okay. We'll be okay. In time. When it's all over. We'll be okay._

It becomes my mantra, a whispered recitation, more a plea than a prayer.

_Please, let us be okay_.

"Hey."

I catch the hint of command red in the blurred corner of my vision, dismiss my immediate embarrassment for the realization that this probably isn't a stranger. Lose your husband, receive condolences. Lose your husband _and _your daughter, there aren't enough words and sad smiles in the quadrant... After a while, people just avoid you.

Though, there are few admirals left in Starfleet. The last good men in this chronically afflicted organization – Barton, Hayes, maybe even Price – they might follow me, seek to offer their comfort as they have in moments passed. But they're probably the only ones.

In the crux of my elbow, his touch is warm but unfamiliar. Then again, so is everyone's. Maybe it's the only thing I've passed to my children, either by constitution or conduct. I've successfully produced two women living on the cusp of tactility, devoid of any real tangible connection to their peers. The curse of one prodigy was enough - I was unlucky enough to have _two_.

Although, my hope for Phoebe rests in the reality that she has her art, her paintings, as evocative and cabalistic as they are. I have no real misgivings that in time she will find someone with whom she can move in tandem, who will learn her needs and fears, when to stay her and when to indulge her.

I've never held such a hope for Kathryn. I still don't.

"Are you okay?"

And now I'm caught, between the mystery of his voice and the dreadful sensation that I have just done the one thing I wasn't supposed to do here and destroyed the poised image that _Captain Janeway_ would want me to maintain.

I drop my chin to my chest, use the bulk of my hair to hide my face long enough to brush the lingering tears from beneath my eyes.

"Tired, that's all."

Even in my own ears the words sound empty, but I have faith that my age will play to my advantage. I _look_ tired, anyway. I pull up to see at him but feel my veneer crack a little. "You're Commander... Chakotay? Am I pronouncing that correctly?"

"You are, Mrs. Janeway." He smiles at the surprise that has undoubtedly slipped my control. I know his face the same way half the quadrant does, from FFN clips and news photos heralding his reformation from Maquis rebel to unflappable Starfleet officer... all under the direction of my daughter, of course.

But how on Earth does he know mine?

He doesn't hesitate to offer an explanation. "She has your eyes."

No, she has her father's eyes. And my hair. The same unruly, tangled mess she's hated since she was a toddler and sought to saw it off with the any number of sharp instruments. The same hair she's now lopped and stripped of all natural highlight into a dull but efficient bob.

It hurt to see for the first time over a year ago. Second only to the iron in her voice over the comm. when I failed to stop myself from mentioning it aloud.

_Mother_.

"Can I get you some water?"

This man. Chakotay. He's waiting for an answer now. It doesn't come out as more than a bare nod before he guides me gently to the nearby bench. His disappears briefly but returns with a clear glass cradled in the hollow of his hand. He kneels before offering it, watches me through the first shaky swallow.

"Thank you."

"Would you like to me get Kathryn?"

I start to say no, but the way he says her name stops me, freezes every inch of my skin then raises it to gooseflesh. Like it's a natural thing for him to do, to say with such clear reverence but also…

It's hard not to notice how remarkably handsome he is. Each strong line of his face etched to symmetrical perfection. As if folded down the medial line of his body, his every feature would meet perfectly, end to end, save the barest hint of a crook in his otherwise aquiline nose.

He throws a quick gaze over his shoulder, though the narrow gap in the partition separating us from the room and calls her to him with his eyes, the barest nod of his chin.

There's more to him that what she's communicated in her letters, what she's mentioned in passing about his calm, effective nature.

Kathryn eases from the edge of the crowd to join us, settles a steadying hand against his forearm as she crouches beside him, and grips the cuff of his uniform tighter when his free hand settles in the soft center of her back. The simplicity of the gesture, the fluidity of it...

"Mom?"

Something flashes across her face when she looks at him. There for a second then gone, glassed under a well-practiced facade that gives him no cause to suspect it was ever there.

"Mom, what's wrong?"

I can feel her eyes sweeping my face, hemmed with hesitation, confusion. Concern.

"Maybe I should get the Doc."

He means _their_ doctor, the hologram.

"No," I say sharply then add. "I'm fine."

"Now I know where you get it," he tells her.

She smiles but it doesn't reach her eyes. "Mom, do you want to go home?"

Home. Yes. There's security there, open spaces, fewer people, less reason to reflect on the things I should have, would have, done that might have changed any of this.

I nod. "Get Phoebe. She can –"

"No." Now the captain's on deck, rising with a soft guide of her first officer's shoulder. "I'll take you."

"Kathryn…"

She ignores me, turns to him. "Can you do the diplomatic mambo for me until I get back?"

"Of course."

His face gets a quick touch, the barest brush of her knuckles along his jaw, but the heat remains long after her fingers are removed.

I look at her again and know.

_She loves him_.

* * *

I'm convinced I've been asleep for only a few minutes, but my eyes open to a darker, cooler room than the one I recall closing them in. My first instinct is to call for Edward. Still, after all these years. The next is for Kathryn, knowing she'll be quicker to answer. Time has done nothing to clear these inclinations from my mind during these quick, painful seconds before I realize…

They're _both_ gone.

Just as it's faded out, the confusion reignites at the sound of her voice in the floor below me and I remember. The banquet. Their homecoming. That really _is_ her voice, the sharp, pointed ends of her words, stepped up a few octaves to suggest she's mildly aggravated. I pull the loose ends of the knitted throw around my shoulders and head for the stairs.

Proximity bends the shapeless sounds into clearer context.

"She's seventy-two, Kathryn. I'm not sure what you want me to tell you. Between teaching at the institute and my own work, I've had seven gallery openings between here and Risa in the last year. Hovering over my mother hasn't exactly been on the top of my to-do list."

"_Our_ mother."

A kettle is lifted and set on the stove, cabinets opened and slammed, long sighs exchanged. "How is it that you are still so incredibly arrogant?" Phoebe demands.

"I suppose by the same method that makes you so terribly selfish."

"Oh, don't level that holier than thou bullshit on me, Kathryn Janeway. You're not fooling anyone, at least not anyone in _this _house."

Now _here _are the ladies I know. The sniping, competitive pair who could argue over the proper texture of toast. Hell, _have_.

"Promise me that when I _do_ die," I say, stepping into the warm light of my kitchen. "You two will let me go peacefully. Hm?"

"_Mom_."

"_Mother_."

"Is there tea?"

"I'll get you a cup," Kathryn offers.

Phoebe lays a hip against the island, latches a hand on the other. "Still remember where they are?"

Kathryn's gives no response, but the tension ratchets up her spine and causes her to set the potted mug against the counter a little harder than necessary.

My fingers work into the baby hairs at the base of Phoebe's neck, drag her ear to my mouth. "_That's enough_."

She makes no further protest, but I wedge a biscuit in her mouth for good measure.

We take our tea to the center of the recessed living room, Edward's design, not mine. I believe his intention was to have a larger family in time, but what we wound up with was a lipped edge that has been the source of several turned ankles and busted lips. Phoebe still has a mark, just above her left incisor. Too stubborn and Bohemian to have it regenerated properly, which the same can be said of the chicken pox scar over Kathryn's right eye.

It takes me a full minute to process the sight of them seated, shoulder to shoulder, arguing over whose feet go under which pillow. It escalates into a small shoving match then Phoebe yanks a lock of Kathryn's hair, only to find herself paralyzed by a sharp, reflexive maneuver where her wrist is turned and held at an impossible angle.

"Mom!"

"Kathryn, do not use defensive tactics on your –"

The laughter bursts from my lips before the end of the sentence can, and continues until my stomach aches with it. I'm vaguely aware both my daughters are watching with a careful mixture of amusement and concern.

"I'm sorry." I shake away the few tears that have formed in the bottom of my eyes. Center on Kathryn. "You're really _here_."

"Yeah. I really am."

But the way she says it hints at an amazement equal if not greater than my own.

"How…?"

She shakes her head. "Until debriefings are over, that much is classified. Suffice it to say, it's over."

A comfortable silence fills the space around us, held as long as it takes for the last bit of blue light to fade from the sky. Eventually, Phoebe rests her head on Kathryn's shoulder then reaches up to touch her hair. "I hate it."

Kathryn chuckles. "Yeah, I know."

The rest of the evening passes quickly as Kathryn does her best to recount the last seven years, but I know she's leaving out certain details, the way her father always did. Whether she doesn't want to worry us or has no particular desire to relive them in the moment, there's a clear theme to each story, centered around her crew.

In a matter of hours their names become familiar, even her reclaimed Borg woman, who she insisted is more comfortable as Seven than anything else. Still, there's a quiet knowledge in her words, a wonderment in her reflections, as if she's surprised at how far they'd all come.

"They were incredible… all of them."

"_Some_ more than others, I'm sure…" Phoebe mutters.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I offer her a patient smile. "You cut the fat a little lean on a few of them, honey."

"_One_ of them," Phoebe corrects.

Kathryn's eyes race between her sister's face and mine, a guarded expression across her lips.

"He's incredibly handsome," I offer.

For a second, she looks like she might disagree, or at least feign disagreement, but eventually says, "Yes. He is."

Phoebe's eyes widen then narrow in mock disapproval. "Kathryn Janeway, he's your _first officer_." Then waves her fingers in the air. "Details. _Now_. And don't leave out the good parts."

While Phoebe pushes for only the most salacious minutia – things a mother should probably never hear about her daughter – Kathryn remains calm and collected, telling us about their first introduction, her impassioned argument to merge their crews, shifting into the easy, mutual calm that sustained them all the way to the end. Each loss they suffered, on either side, felt deeply and profoundly as if they'd always chosen to be there.

Though he was a vegetarian, he cooked, knew how to work with his hands. He argued with her, though rarely enough to do more than offer perspective, and the few times they truly disagreed, she'd felt it. Hard.

She grows only mildly embarrassed as she works her way across the most delicate ground.

"You slept with him!"

"Phoebe," she whispers, clearly pained as she wipes the dull lines seating themselves across her forehead.

"More than once!" Phoebe launches across the couch for a better angle and crowds a pillow to her chest. "Oh, I have got to see your face for this!"

My hand clamps down on Phoebe's shoulder. "Take the vegetables out to the rabbits, please?"

"Seriously?_ Now?_" Her whine shifts into an all out stomping pout as she pushes herself to her feet and into the kitchen, complaining the entire way.

"Just when things are getting good, I have to leave the room…" The screen door opened and closed snaps off her words and I look at Kathryn.

"Thank you," she says.

"Oh, I have no more interest in your sex life than you have in mine."

Blushing, she sniffs a laugh. "Point taken."

"But, I would like to know about your heart. I'm assuming because you've not got a ring on that finger that this wasn't anything… serious?"

She bristles. "What makes you think I would have married him if it were?"

"We might not be close, but I at least know that much about you. You're not really fond of casual… anything. My question is, does he know?"

A hard swallow pushes a lump down her throat and she tears her eyes away from mine.

"I suspected as much." A long sigh clears the tension from my throat. "And now?"

Still for long a moment, her eyes pick over the dying embers in the bottom of the hearth. "I don't know."

_Ah_. So there it is. The real source of her unrest. Nothing ever shook her father as deeply as matters of his own heart. Nothing could rock her now expect similar uncertainty in hers. Even harder for her to express.

"I made… allowances for behaviors I otherwise would not have, had we not been out there. And there were times that I almost let myself believe…" She shakes off the end of the sentence, presses on with a new thought. "Out there, all we had was each other, but I was in no place to be his captain and his –"

"Girlfriend. The word you're looking for is girlfriend."

And she hates it. In part, because she was already his lover and the other because, to her, it sounds patently juvenile.

"Doesn't matter," she says dully.

"Doesn't it?"

She shakes her head, fighting back the grief welling in her throat. "Not now."

I collect her hands in mine and press my lips to the back of her knuckles, resting there, breathing in the smell of her skin.

"Will you stay? At least, for a little while?"

She nods, knowing full well I'd never ask this of her unless I need it. Desperately, selfishly need it before I lose her again.

* * *

It's strange to have an admiral in the house again. Stranger still to see her seated at his desk of an evening, working late and offering hollow promises of "just one more hour." I don't bother to remind her it was those same words that used to reduce her to frustrated tears. Instead, I warm her tea and head upstairs, pleased with the added warmth her presence provides.

In the months that followed her return, I wasn't certain how long it would last. I'm still not. But she surprised me when she admitted she was ready to be away from Starfleet, night and day, and longed for the comfort her own childhood room provided.

She still rises with the sun, lingers with the night, refuses to speak before her first mouthful of coffee. But this isn't my daughter, or at least not the one who I lost seven years ago. She's a great deal more than that, now. Darker. Haunted in a profound way, and now I know it's only a matter of time.

New missions come, whisking her back to the stars, to her ship. To Chakotay, now its captain. At some point, I know something's changes between them. Her spirits buoy without cause, her face flushes at the mere mention of his name. So she's in love, again. After losing two fiancés, she'll make a third attempt. I try to offer what advice I can, a motherly warning about pacing herself between work and play. But what I mean to say is:

Don't do this to him.

Don't let him love you and hope for a future you won't give him, c_an't_ give him.

She returns briefly, but the anger has positioned itself in the corners of her eyes, the tension waking her earlier, keeping her up later. Away longer. On one of her rarer visits, an FFN news reel echoes out of her office. The words "Voyager," "return journey," and "Delta Quadrant" pull me through the back end of the house to find her seated, silent, with no small amount of fear in her eyes.

"They're going to send them back," she says.

_No_.

"I have to stop them. Show them… it's too dangerous."

_No. No. NO!_

If my outburst is anything, it's of the same pitch and pain I felt when she came into this world. The same grit-teethed sobs as she tore through me the first time, followed by the exhausted tears when I saw her.

It does nothing to dissuade her. Then again, it never did. I watch her all the way to the door.

"I'll be home soon."

* * *

There is no peace for a man who knows too little.

And at her funeral, Chakotay's face is bleak and pained. A cold, hard mask of terrible truth confirming he was no way prepared for _this_.

He knew her as an enemy, then a captain. A friend, then something more. But he didn't know she's been dancing with death since the moment she was born, blue and half-strangled by the only connection that ever truly formed between us. That the story of her laying down in a thunder storm after a tennis match or losing three months to grief after Edward's death wasn't the closest she'd come to self-assisted suicide. That she would never stop throwing herself into danger, not until it took her, completely and irrevocably, because _he made her this way_.

Time moves forward and back, on and on, without her, again.

At some point, Phoebe comes to visit. Her face is gaunt with something familiar… yet hopeful of something new.

"Mom?"

A question now, like she's trying to decide if I'm lucid enough to hear what news she's bearing. And she's brought at least two doctors with her, dressed up in fresh, bright blue uniforms, hyposprays on hand, just in case.

"Mom, it's about Kathryn…"

Her father said it meant "pure."

* * *

_fini_


End file.
